The music business week in five – Friday 28 Jan 2011

Hey ho, here it is, Friday people. And I told you seven days ago that this week I would be able to name some of the bands that are due to play The Great Escape this May, and look, this is me making good on that promise.

As you may have already seen earlier this week, a big bunch of bands have already been stuck on the bill for Europe’s leading new music festival, with Katy B, Brother, Worriedaboutsatan, Little Dragon and Wave Pictures among the reasons to be excited. The first of the ‘Dome shows’ that take place during TGE has also been announced. These are open to TGE wristband holders for just six quid, and the first band confirmed in this part of the programme is the marvellous Friendly Fires. Hurrah.

And then, of course, there’s Warpaint. Team CMU caught these girls playing in that little bar at the end of Brighton Pier at TGE last year and got so excited that Andy went on to include them in his artists of the year top ten last month. If you missed them in 2010, well you need to do some catching up, but you’ll find them quite a bit higher up the TGE bill this coming May, one of the Great Escape’s great success stories.

You’ll find the full band line up as confirmed so far over there at escapegreat.com. And now for another promise. This time next week, I’ll be able to start telling you about the first few confirmed panellists, speakers, topics and other delights confirmed for the TGE convention that we here at CMU are programming this year. So, see you in seven days to make good on that promise. Meanwhile, here’s your week in five.

01: VEVO’s UK launch was confirmed. Actually, Sony Music digital man Thomas Hesse said at the launch of that IFPI Digital Music Report last week that the Sony/Universal owned online music video service would go live in the UK this year, but with the digital firm now recruiting its British sales team VEVO’s sales chief David Kohl told Media Week that launch would come in the next “few months”. Everyone seems to think April. Elsewhere in digital news, Sony’s Omnifone-powered cross-device streaming music service, Music UnLimited with Qriocity, already live in the UK, expanded into a number of other European territories this week. CMU report | Marketing report

02: The Pirate Bay promised a new file-sharing service.Which was nice of them. The file-sharing group has put up a webpage at fear.themusicbay.org, with an insider telling TorrentFreak the current TPB team are planning on launching an uber new file-sharing service to coincide with the upcoming 78th birthday of the aforementioned IFPI. The music industry should be “afraid” the anonymous source added. CMU report |TorrentFreak report

03: A Chinese file-sharing service started to block illegal content, presumably because the authorities in China recently published details of new penalties for online piracy, with up to seven years in jail for the worst offenders. VeryCD started blocking links to unlicensed content last Friday. Its owners have hopes to relaunch as a legitimate music platform, though will presumably have lost most of their users by the time that happens. CMU report | Variety report

04: ACS:Law’s main man stepped back from sue-the-fans litigation. Lawyer Andrew Crossley – whose London law firm led the way in sending legal letters to alleged file-sharers last year demanding damages from the accused – told the judge hearing the 27 cases that were actually taken to court that he wanted nothing more to do with file-sharing litigation. He said he was quitting because of harassment by the file-sharing community, and not because the judge had previously said his firm’s legal arguments in court were flawed on all sorts of levels. ACS most notably worked for porn firms, but had a few small music clients. CMU report | Guardian article

05: Live Nation settled its long running delivery fees case.The live giant’s ticketing firm Ticketmaster was sued years ago by two consumers who claimed the ticketing agency misled customers by implying so called “delivery fees” covered the cost of delivering tickets, when the firm actually made a profit on them. The lawsuit became a class action last year. Although not admitting fault, Live Nation agreed to compensate confused customers and cover all legal costs, to the tune of $22.3 million. CMU report | ABC News report

And that is it. Do look out for your CMU Weekly, complete with Go! Team compiled Spotify playlist and the second ever CMU podcast, out this afternoon – www.theCMUwebsite.com/weekly.